Titanic's mirage, part 1: The enigma of the Arctic High and a cold‐water tongue of the Labrador Current

• Published in: Weather
• Main Author: Zinkova, Mila
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Icy River; Iceberg*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wea.3243; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fwea.3243; https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wea.3243

Abstract More than a century after the sinking of the Titanic, scientists and historians are still trying to understand what happened on that fateful night. New hypotheses, including the one that declares a Fata Morgana type mirage was involved in both the collision with the iceberg and the failed communications between the Titanic and the Californian, are being introduced on a regular basis. This article is the first in a four‐part series that examines the mirage theory of the Titanic disaster. In this part, a few ways in which a temperature inversion (which is required for a mirage to form) could have developed at the site of the disaster at the time of the collision and subsequent sinking are explored. A high‐pressure cell, an icy river of melt‐water and the Gulf Stream are all examined as factors that could have contributed to the formation of an inversion. It is demonstrated that the development of a steep temperature inversion at the wreck site, though rather unlikely, cannot be excluded completely.